Racing & Restoring

WE thought it was about time for an update to let you know what we’ve been getting up to lately, because we knew you were wondering. So here goes, we went to Arena Essex Raceway last week to support our buddy Nick Underwood a.k.a Tin Tops in his debut Mini Super Twos race. Starting at the back (because it was his first time racing these cars) TT managed to complete the three races in P6, P7 then finishing in P6, seriously good stuff for his first attempt and very entertaining to watch. It’s always good to be surrounded by lots of petrol heads and we like to support fellow car nutters whenever we can, so thank you for the opportunity Nick.

We also started striping down the MK3 Cortina pickup – our second custom classic project. We pulled the V6 (which will be powering the Mini Rat Rod we’re also working on) and eventually, when funds allow, we’ll be sticking a V8 in the pickup. After unbolting the wings, (yes they unbolt which makes life a hell of a lot easier) we found a lot of South African dust and dirt but hardly any rust, this is one solid car, thank you car gods! The perfect basis for a custom muscle car…

The Mini Rat Rod or “Monster” as we call it is coming along slowly – this is a personal project with no budget so it gets attention when there’s time and it gets parts when there’s money. The de-seaming is complete though, we’ve done a fair bit of rust repair, some fabrication and we’re working on the de-guttering. After that it’s time we got our arses in the Landy and went to pick up a chassis, once we’ve got that we’ll be able to figure out how this ratty pile of craziness is actually going to come together. The V6 which has been pilfered from the pickup needs to be rebored and generally overhauled, so that’s happening at the moment. Lots to do on these great custom projects, good job we’re obsessed with cars really. Oh and we redesigned our website – taadaa!